Re: [tied] Re: Numerals query again

From: alex
Message: 27045
Date: 2003-11-11

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> 10-11-03 22:29, alex wrote:
>
>> well, we discussed about Alb. "një" where I said so far I remember
>> that it should be seen as Rom. "unã"(<*une). You shoued some
>> dialectal examples from Albanian and you presented Hamp's ideas on
>> this "një"
>
> So what? Good linguistics and naive guessing are worlds apart. Eric
> Hamp did the best thing that could be done: he took into account
> several dialects of Geg as well as Tosk, treating them all as
> equally valid evidence, rather than speculate on the basis of
> Standard Albanian alone. That's why his analysis is so convincing:
> njân-/një < *nje:n < *(V)ni-ain- < *eni + *oino-. Of course, there is
> a distant relationship with Lat. unu- < *oino-, but Alb. një is
> inherited and independent of the Romanian word (which is simply a
> reflex of the Latin numeral). For details, see:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/23406
>
> Piotr

if you see Rom. "une-" as reflex of Latin unu- , be your guess.
The nonrothacisation of Alb. "n" seems to be due the palatalisation of
the "n", thus the palatalisation of "n" was before rothacism.

Alex